To Do and Die Prologue

"To Do and Die"

Prologue

         The explosion of the rail gun’s ordinance was so hard and so close that the sergeant’s teeth chattered and he bit the inside of his cheek. He cursed and spat blood out around his mouthpiece. In a trap that even a blind hog should have seen coming! His immediate superior was dead and so he was now in charge of his squad. The lieutenant sat hunkered down with his back against the consteel wall, consulting with satellite feeds from orbit, and trying to work out where the rest of the company was located.  Another rail gun shot went off, this one not 100 meters from where they were all hunkered down. The round must have hit a building because soon flaming chunks of consteel was raining down on the sergeant and his squad. Luckily, their nano-armor, upon the first impact, immediately went rigid, giving the Marines the strength and toughness of bugs.

         The nano-armor was, at rest, black cloth with patches of plastic steel sown in around the chest, shoulders and back, groin and thighs and knees. All of it was interlaced with nano-machines that when activated, and they would activate automatically, could cause the suit to go rigid or to absorb kinetic energy. The suit could also be used to give the Marine’s super-human speed and strength as they worked, like the exoskeleton on some bugs. The helmet could detect either the lack of oxygen or the presence of noxious chemicals and would grow down around the Marine’s face, sealing him and a recirculation system would provide the Marine with oxygen, indefinitely; a Marine, fully enclosed in his nano-armor, could survive for up to three weeks by recalculating air and body wastes.

         His lieutenant’s voice sounded in his ear, “Sergeant, I have our next objective. 10 km to the west is the transmitting station that is feeding the starship their soldiers RFIDs. If we can take that out, the damn rail guns will most likely stop firing because they won’t be able to tell who’s on their side and who’s on ours.”

         The sergeant responded, “Sir, rather than destroy it, why don’t we see if we can commandeer a console with codes from one of the enemy squads and use it to confuse the RFIDs of the enemy soldiers with ours? Their own starships would fire on their own men. Once they realize their mistake, they will be so caught up in fixing it that we can bring in Jupiter to surprise them and wreak some havoc.”

         The sergeant could see the lieutenant’s head shaking from even here, “Too risky. We don’t even know if the squad has the codes. Even if they do, we aren’t sure we can even crack them. We do not have the time to go running around the battlefield. We need to do something now. We charge the station, blow it sky high, and then we start picking off squads, one by one.”

         “It’s not risky. We have the ability,  I know that Jefferson can hack the codes as easily as you please. We know every squad has to have one just in case of an EMP reset, just like we have one for our starships. That station,” he stabbed his finger toward the west even though he wasn’t sure that the lieutenant could see him, “is a heavily armed, dug in defensive position that holds the high ground. We will be cut down, before we can even get close enough.”

         “Sergeant, need I remind you that you are a Royal Confederacy Marine? That means when a commanding officer tells you to jump, you don’t argue, you do not ask why, you do it, even if it is a cliff, and you do it with a devil may care look on your face because you are Marine and you do not fear death, death fears you! Now I am going to upload the coordinates and the battle plan I have outlined into your chip. You will take half the squad and approach from the flank, I will charge in the front and try and distract them.”

         “Yes sir!” At least he isn’t going to take the flank, seeing as he isn’t even here to die if that body of his gets destroyed, The sergeant thought, The men he is taking with him though, they will die and there isn’t a damn thing I can do about it! Who is he to talk about courage and facing death in the face? His body is floating a couple miles up on a snug cot; if he gets blown to hell he just wakes up on the starship and reports his failure. If I get blown to hell, I’m eating dinner with the devil himself.

         Booth’s line of vision suddenly glowed as the chip in his brain interacted with his optical nerves. A waypoint marked where the communication link was and showed him the RFID’s of his squad mates. A red skull acting as his target reticule, moved as he looked around, factoring in wind speed and other issues to give him the exact area where his bullet would land.

         He motioned to the four men who would be going with him to keep up as they trotted out in a long line that would bring them around to the flank of the communication link. He looked back over his shoulder and mentally pulled up a small square showing the position of Lieutenant Ewers and the rest of the squad. He kept his scanners in the background, which would alert him to any possible threats and would highlight the threat in a bright red outline, making it real easy to see in the dark. Of course, some troops wore certain nano-armor, that caused Booth’s HUD to skip right over them, but there was nothing he could do about that now. Just ahead the marker that indicated when the Lieutenant’s squad would begin the assault glowed. As soon as his squad hit that marker, they were going to give a full frontal assault on a well-defended enemy location. Insane.

         Booth patched through to the Lieutenant, “Sir, I think you should wait at least five minutes before beginning the assault after we hit the waypoint. It would let us hit at relatively the same time and might reduce casualties.”

         “Negative,” Ewers voice piped into Booth’s ear, “We have to hit first. It doesn’t matter how many casualties we take as long as you or one of your squad mates are able to disable this tower. Is that understood?”

         Booth clicked his mike in reply rather than have to orally respond to the Lieutenant.

         Booth’s boot hit the waypoint and immediately he heard the clack of automatic gunfire and the hum and zip of a rail gun emplacement. Booth and his squad keyed up their suits and suddenly they were running much faster than any human could hope to achieve on his own.

         Booth looked back at where the other squad was running and the Lieutenant was no longer holding back. Even with the squad’s suits activated, the Lieutenant was moving faster than should have been humanly possible under any conditions, in fact, he wasn’t even running anymore, rather he was jumping through the air, landing, running for 5 or 6 meters then jumping forward another 30 meters or so. Booth pulled up the split screen and watched at the Lieutenant landed in the middle of wall surrounding the complex and punched fists and feet through the wall as he climbed up it as if it were made out of paper. He leaped up and landed on top of a rampart, right next to a machine gun emplacement. Booth could see now that the Lieutenant had his PCD or Personal Combat Drone amped up as far as it would go. The Lieutenant grabbed the machine gunner by the neck and threw him over the wall. Then he picked up the whole machine gun, ripped it out of its brackets in the wall and turned towards the courtyard below and began firing into it.

The rest of the squad pushed through to the gates, since most of the opposition was focused on the Lieutenant; they ignored the squad running for the gates; except for a sharp eyed rail gun operator who turned his rail gun towards the squad running towards the gate. Booth keyed up his flight drone, assigned to all non-coms and officers, and instructed it to take out the rail gun currently trained on the other squad. The drone de-cloaked above their heads and fired three rockets that homed in on the rail gun emplacement, blowing it sky high. At the same time the Lieutenant’s drone blew a hole in the wall for his squad to run through. Suddenly, soldier in a PANI uniform jumped from the roof of the complex, landing lightly on his feet and then leaping up towards the Lieutenant. It would appear that another officer had entered the fray. Booth watched as both officers squared off and drew their sonic-swords. His squad needed to hurry up.

         Booth turned and motioned to the man behind him to speed it up, just as he did a rail gun round landed right in the man’s chest, vaporizing him and throwing Booth 5 meters to the right. He hit the ground with bone-jarring impact that his nano-armor did little to disperse. Of course, without the nanos that impact and concussive shock wave would have killed him as much as it did the man it hit. He looked towards the transmitting station and saw that there was another man who had the rail gun under his control. The lieutenant and the other officer were nowhere in sight.

         Booth queued up his drone controls and turned back to his men, “Hit the dirt and go turtle up!”

         Going turtle up meant that the suit would completely lock down his men for as long as they needed to and it would generally provide protection from everything except a direct hit from a rail gun round. Of course, because it drained the suits’ power and because it generally slowed down an assault, it was rare that a squad went turtle up and Booth was sure the lieutenant would ream his ass for this once they got space side again.

         Booth zeroed the drone in, controlling it with his mind, onto the rail gun. He could feel the concussions all around as the ordinance blasted in among his squad and himself. He could see as his suit had sealed up all around him and gone rigid, the nanos flexing so that they could repeal anything off him, like a turtle’s shell. 

         He fired the drones last missile as it de-cloaked directly in front of the soldier manning the rail gun. The drone was so close that Booth could see the gunner’s eyes widen in surprise and dread as the missile flew out of the drone’s bay and exploded directly on the gun emplacement sending gore and fiery debris raining on the soldiers below.

         One of the other soldiers must have gotten a lucky shot because the drone jerked suddenly and Booth lost his feed, he cursed under his breath and then limbered his armor again, “All right, lets limber up and go get ‘em!”

         His squad stood as their armor began to respond. He noticed one of his soldier’s armor was not flexing up and remained rigid. He checked and saw that the soldier was still alive, he just could not move.

         “I’ll be alright Sarge, think I might just lay here and take a nap. Just promise you will not forget about me and you will come back for me.”

         “Will do, do not go anywhere Vasquez.”

         “Wouldn’t dream of it.”

         He turned to the rest of his squad, “All right, let’s head out.”

         They began to run towards the communication station, they were now in close enough range that shots from the enemies’ rifles began to hit the dirt and a couple even pinged off their armor.

         Suddenly the lieutenant’s voice began to scream in Booth’s ear, “Finally, where the hell where you? I’ve been taking on this damn defense all by myself! My squad is all gone. I ordered them to take a defensive position. They were simply overwhelmed; luckily they took enough of the bastards with them that I was able to take the position.”

         “Sorry sir,” Booth replied. “We were under direct fire from a rail gun emplacement so I ordered the men turtle up while I took care of it.” He felt bitter about the lieutenant's squad, but he knew that even had he made it on time that squad would have likely been ripped apart.

         “Damn it sergeant, I thought I had told you this mission was designed for speed! You should have pushed through!”

         Booth and his squad reached the rear blast doors, “Never mind. Just get your ass in here. I am a little preoccupied right now.”

         Booth ran up to the doors and signaled for his demolition man (or woman in this case) to bring the explosives forward. She began to spray the explosive gel along the edges of the doors and drew a large x before tossing the can at the foot of the doors. Booth raised an eyebrow at her.

         “Never hurts to go a little overkill, besides I brought two cans if we need the other.”

         Booth nodded and keyed up the lieutenant, “Alright sir, we are about to blow the door now so just be ready.”

         The mike clicked in response and Booth nodded to his demolition expert. The roar was deafening and his squad’s armor suits clanged their visors shut in response to the smoke and dust that flew back at them. Booth hoped that the explosion had caused sufficient chaos inside of the station walls.

         He charged forward into the breach with his squad and saw that the doors had indeed caused quite a large amount of damage when they were blown inward. It was obvious that a squad was aware that they were going to be trying to come in through the blast doors; it was also quite obvious that they expected the Marines to bore through and quietly sneak in rather than blast the whole thing down. Bodies and pieces of bodies lay strewn everywhere. It appeared  one door had become a flying guillotine and had scythed through twenty men and women before coming to rest, embedded in the wall of the comm station itself.

         Booth came through with his rifle at the ready, a full clip inserted into the slot. Unlike guns of the past, the rifles he and his squad carried operated on magnetic pulses to fire the bullets at a much higher rate than old style powder bullets. They also tended to fly truer due to the loss of friction as they left the barrel of the gun.

         He fired at a cluster of troops still reeling after the explosion of the blast doors and two of them dropped immediately while the other four still standing staggered back and returned the fire, although their fire was much less concentrated due to the fact that they were still stunned from the blast and their nano-armor did not have the time to adjust to Booth’s squads incoming fire.

         Nano-armor was able to repel fired shots, but only for so long before the suit either was ordered into stasis or the armor was overloaded and the rounds began to punch through. Due to the armor having absorbed the blast from the doors, it did not take long for Booth’s rounds to begin punching holes through the armor and flesh alike.

         Suddenly more enemy soldiers began to pour out of the comm station itself, Booth yelled for his men to set up a firing position, just as a concussive grenade fell at his feet; he hardly had time to acknowledge the danger before the grenade went off.

         The concussive grenade let out a shock wave that lifted Booth up into the air and slammed him into the wall behind him. Luckily, he had not taken any shots and his armor had responded as it should, encasing him in an almost indestructible shell. The armor went quite a ways into the wall and he literally had to pull himself out of the five foot wide wall. His squad had not been as luck as him however, and they had been thrown back and down rather than up and back because the grenade was not directly underneath them. They were being shot at and with the grenade having scrambled their suits much the same way the explosion scrambled the enemies, the enemy soldiers were now firing with ruthless efficiency into his squad’s ranks, as they attempted to return fire.

         Suddenly, like a possessed demon, the lieutenant was there crashing through the enemy soldiers with his sonic-sword, knocking soldiers left and right, his sword slicing arms, legs, and heads, with so much power than not even the nano-armor was stopping it. The enemy squad turned and began to fire into the lieutenant. His armor had stopped working long ago and the slugs tore into his body, chunks of it flying away in spray of liquid that looked a lot like blood. But just as quickly as the wounds appeared they began to knit themselves close. Still, despite the lieutenant’s PCD’s superior healing capabilities, it could not last forever under the intense amounts of sustained fire it was taking.

         Booth pulled himself out of the wall and the crater he had made when he had gone in. His right leg was stiff under him and his nano-armor must have sensed that his leg was broken and had gone rigid on the right leg. He hoped down and landed with a grunt, he brought his gun to bear and fired into the mass of soldiers to the right, he reached into his belt and pulled out a concussive grenade of his own.

         “CG out,” he called out to his squad and lieutenant.

         His lieutenant, despite the PCD’s injuries, managed to leap a few meters in the air and landed on top of the wall. The rest of the squad that was still standing turned and planted their feet. The CG went off with a loud whooph and Booth turned to find the enemy squad in a much worse state than Booth’s squad had been. That was the thing about concussive grenades. If you knew they were coming your nano-armor could hold up to the force, if you didn't know they were coming, you were likely to get screwed. 

         Booth was suddenly thrown back, yet again, as his lieutenant fired the one remaining rail gun into the crowd of enemy soldiers. The only problem was he had fired danger close and several of his troops had much worse happen to them than just being thrown back. Booth found himself slamming into the wall once again, he felt his left arm go stiff, broken just like his leg. At least this time, he didn’t create a crater. He looked back at his men and saw that two more were down and were not going to be getting back up anytime soon.

         Booth, cursed under his breath. This was bad. The lieutenant knew that his PCD was going to give out soon and he was trying to take as many PANI troops with him as he could and damn any common enlisted scum who got in his way. The lieutenant continued to rain death and destruction into the courtyard. Booth huddled against the wall and screamed as the rail gun pounded time and time again around him, blasting holes in the station itself. Suddenly, the rumbling stopped. Booth raised his head and saw a one-armed PANI officer standing behind the headless lieutenant's PCD. The officer turned its mangled face, have covered by a helmet, towards Booth and its one eye tightened as it flipped its sword around and pointed it at the sergeant.

         Shit.

         The officer leaped and landed right in front of Booth's following with a swing that brushed the sergeants cheek as he leaned back and scrambled backwards on all fours. Luckily, the PCD was so mangled and beat that its responses had been greatly weakened. Otherwise, that swing would have taken off Booth's head.

         Booth's hand slipped on something as he scrambled backwards, the PCD awkwardly limping towards him. It's right knee facing at the wrong angle. Must've broken it in his dramatic leap. Booth thought. Officer typically think they can scare us into freezing.

         He looked towards the object and saw that it was one of the missiles from his downed drone. He quickly picked it up in his hand and turned it over, seeing the green light for the firing device.

         Booth pointed the missile pod at the PCD and activated the firing mechanism manually as he ordered his suit turtle up.  He smiled within his mask when he saw the eye of the PCD widen as the missile slammed into its chest, embedded itself, carried the PCD about 10 meters before exploding. 

         Booth's HUD crackled and wavered as the shock wave washed over him, and he grunted as it injuries his broken limbs even more, but he limbered up and slowly stood looking at the destruction around him. Nothing within the courtyard moved. 

         Booth limped toward a hole blown into the station, picking up a discarded RCM rifle as he did so. He palmed the biometric scanner and overrode the security parameters. He entered the dim building and found no resistance. It was as quiet as the battlefield outside. 

         Keeping the rifle at the ready, Booth ran to the elevator shaft and found it blocked. One of the lieutenants rail gun rounds must have taken it out. He was going to have to do this the old fashioned way.  He turned and found the stair well and began to run up it, taking the stairs three at a time.

         Every flat he came to Booth kicked open the door and cleared the room beyond. Finally he found the floor he needed and kicked in the door and was immediately punched back by a round to his chest. Luckily, his suit had time to recharge and rebuffed the round easily. Booth brought his weapon to bear and opened fire, blindly, into the room. He heard the clatter of a gun and then silence.

         Booth moved into the room. The barrel of his gun sweeping back and forth, looking for anymore combatants. Seeing and sensing no movement, Booth looked to where the sound of the gun falling had come. He found himself staring at a young woman, no more than twenty Earth years. Eyes staring sightlessly at the ceiling. There was something familiar about those eyes, then it hit him. It was the officer whose PCD Booth had destroyed. He hadn't been able to tell it was a female earlier due to all the body armor.

         Fool hadn't even bothered to put on nano-armor. They tended to forget that they were no longer immortal when they were not in their PCDs....it was a dangerous trap young officers frequently fell into.

         Booth turned and placed his rifle down on the counter looking at the various interfaces. He slide his palm across them, drawing the one he needed to him like a metal filling to a magnet. He typed in a couple of lines of code and activated them. There. That should surprise the hell out of the Pan-Asian Republic's forces here.

         He keyed up his command structure. "Command. This is Sergeant Booth of Taskforce Delta. The objective has been completed. Request extraction for two. One in stasis. Officer PCD is down, so please get here ASAP."

         "Roger that Delta One. We had already been briefed by your lieutenant. We assumed the mission was a scrub. Glad to hear you made it. Extraction on its way. ETA 10 minutes. Good job. See you space side. Command out." 

         Booth let out a breath of air and shouldered his rifle as he turned back towards the stairway. Damn if he wasn't going to need a drink after this.